Espérance
by mademoiselle.poupee
Summary: "I'm so sorry, my darling girl, but I promise you we will get through this. We won't lose your Mama and whatever happens, the first thing she'll see when she wakes tomorrow, is you my little Sybil. You will be the first thing she'll see." 3x05 AU; Final Chapter - Sybil.
1. un - Tom

**AN:** Well, new Downton Abbey fanfiction in forever. Mostly a product of me, idiot that I am, deciding to rewatch Series 3 only to spend the next hour weeping and shaking, so this is the outlet for my feels because I needed the image out of my mind and voila! I may add more chapters later on from different PoVs, but I haven't settled on the time frame of the other characters yet so...

My medical knowledge is at zero, so please forgive the disparities.

In any case, reviews please and enjoy!

* * *

 _Tom_

"Have you seen her? She's so beautiful," Sybil had whispered, the joy and the pride and the love that he could not put into words reflected in her eyes, the warm weight of the daughter who, even with the newborn wrinkles, the puckered eyes and the matted golden curls, he could already tell would become the image of her mother.

A minuscule part of him wanted to recoil in fear. Perhaps, this was all a dream and he would wake to find himself in the chauffeur's cottage, that very night after York, empty-handed and broken-hearted. But no, this was real and they were real and he could not doubt that in any way as he held them both in his arms, his wife and his daughter, his family. Everything else slipped from his mind then – Ireland, their exile, the fears and doubts of a few mere hours ago; _Just lie back and look at the stars_ – none of that mattered, not with them here.

"She's so beautiful," he echoed. "Oh my darling, I do love you."

He could hardly contain his emotions, even with the small crowd who have gathered around them. _We will be so happy_ , he thought. They will be so happy and in one way or another, he will win back their freedom.

 _My darling Sybil, my darling little girl, I promise to devote every waking minute to your happiness._

He would have stayed. He would have stayed with both of them and spent the night till dawn admiring this tiny creature they have made together, watched every rise of her small chest, memorized every one of her small features, damn what his aristocratic father-in-law decreed about dressing rooms and propriety.

But Sybil needed her rest and in the pain and exhaustion and his own hopelessness and uselessness in the time that had led to this, he could begrudge her nothing.

Then came the screams and Sybil was hitting her head begging a release for her pain, and then – and then –.

Mingling with his own pleading, he could hear that of his mother-in-law and of Mary imploring her sister to listen to her.

"She can't breathe! She can't breathe!"

"There's nothing to be done."

Before his eyes, he watched his wife's body contort strangely, seizing, searching for oxygen. She was already slipping into a place they couldn't reach her. The alabaster of her skin was turning grey and more and more she was looking more and more lifeless. He could feel his own heart slowing, his stomach churning, his brain numbing – not one part of him could accept this gruesome spectacle playing before him.

 _No! No! Something has to be done. He can't lose her. Not now. What cruel trick of fate would give him everything, dangle before him, tantalizing him, only to pull it back in an instant to leave him with nothing?_

"Just breathe, love, breathe," he begged over Cora's and Mary's own tears. _Breathe, love._

In the blink of an eye, the fulfillment of his greatest dreams had morphed into his greatest nightmare.

 _Please don't leave me. I need you. Our daughter needs you. She needs her mother! We have so much plans for her – we need you here with us to make them happen. I can't do this without you, Sybil! Just breathe, love, please._

"No!" he cried as her body stilled, motionless. "No! No!"

Because he can't lose her, not now that their life is just beginning, not now that they have a daughter who needs them both. Not now when their happiness was close at hand.

Somewhere, distantly, he heard a baby's cries, his daughter's cries. She could not understand what happened, what she had just lost. His poor, motherless girl, crying out for sustenance, crying out for her mother.

 _You can't leave us, Sybil. We need you._

His child continued to cry out into the night but he could not move. Everything in him refused to accept what was happening. He refused to leave his wife's side, refused to release her still hand. The cries were becoming louder, more urgent.

Then, he felt movement.

Her hand slipped from his abruptly as her body jerked in an attempt to take in air. Mary was holding her back upright as she coughed from great inhalations. His hand found hers again as he watched her fall against the pillows, panting. Her eyes, the blue eyes he had almost believed he would never see again, locked on his, her breathing labored.

"Tom," she whispered, breathless and barely audible. "Tom, the baby…get…her. She's…crying…somebody needs…to get…her. Please."

He was still, and then – "Oh my darling," tears flowed freely, dampening his suit. He felt his body shaking. He was frantically kissing every inch of her that he could reach. Beside him, he could hear Cora weeping. "Oh my darling, never do that to me again. Never scare me like that again," he cried.

"Tom," Sybil repeated. "Our baby…get…her. My…daughter. Please."

"I-I'll get her," Mary answered, shaken back to reality and hurrying out the door.

She came hurrying back within seconds, running, as if fearing losing her sister once she was out of sight. She held the crying bundle to her chest.

"She's here, darling. Your daughter is here."

"Give…her. She's…hungry. Needs…me."

"L-lady Sybil, I-I don –,"

Tom's eyes rounded on the stuttering voice that had called out in the dim light. Beside him, he could feel his wife feebly reaching for their daughter as Mary protested and pleaded. He could barely hear Sybil's own voice, softer and more breathless it was becoming. His daughter's cries were becoming louder and more desperate with none of them knowing how to act or what to do.

He had very nearly lost them both tonight. Sybil, she…so weak, there was still a chance…

 _I can't lose her. We need her._

He saw nothing but red.

"GET OUT!" he screamed at the figure of Sir Philip Tapsell, trembling in the far corner of the room. "GET OUT AND DON'T YOU DARE SAY ONE MORE WORD OR SO GOD HELP ME!"

* * *

He realized that he matched his breathing to hers, regular for now as she slept peacefully; peaceful for now at the very least.

He clutched her hand and took comfort in its enduring warmth. If he concentrated enough, he could even feel her pulse.

Early in their marriage, a picnic basket between them in Phoenix Park, she had taught him how to measure a pulse, how to determine if the speed of its beat constituted a normal reading. _The heart pumps blood to the body by the distribution of the veins, then the arteries pump it all back_ , she said. _Darling, don't you find it amazing that the pulse in your wrist is every bit a sign of life as the heartbeat?_ Not for the first time then, he wondered that if only she had been allowed to pursue an education, if she would not have become a wonderful doctor?

He can't recall the reason why she had taught him pulse reading in the first place but he could not help feeling grateful now because he could tell that her pulse was normal. It was a sign of life – she was alive.

She was alive now when exactly a week ago, in an eternity when he had also held her hand and pleaded, begged her not to leave him, when euphoria had instantly and without warning turned into agony, she had not heeded his call. Seven days ago, he had watched his wife, the woman who was so full of life, slip away from it.

 _But I haven't gone!_ Her pulse told him. _Did you really think I would leave you when I burned my bridges to follow you?_

But everything remained precarious, Doctor Clarkson lamented that even at this point it could still go either way and the possibility of him losing her – of them losing her, remained very real.

Seven days, and not once did he stop holding his breath.

Seven days and he was becoming accustomed to the clinical scent of the ward, the sterility always hanging in the air. Seven days and he had memorized every water stain in the wall beside him. Seven days and he felt his whole body aching in the stiff chair that had been accorded him but he dared not leave her side.

Seven days of praying relentlessly to God and to every saint he could evoke to spare her. Please.

It had also been five days since he had last seen their daughter. Five days since he had heard her soft mewls, since he had held her warm weight in his arms.

The seizures had recurred once more in the night the doctor had decreed, breaking out of his trance as he insisted she was too weak, in too dangerous a condition to attempt to feed her daughter now, that she should be transferred to the hospital immediately before the seizures and the delirium began anew. Whatever happens, the equipment and medicine were greater in number to cope with the situation, she would be safer there. The baby as well, if only to be sure. At the very least, the infant formula stocked in the wards would do for now, until a wet nurse could be found.

In the flurry of this nightmare, he had vague and detached memories of the events that succeeded that dark moment of fear that his whole world was taken away from him, and then that cautious and fearful sigh of relief when Sybil opened her eyes.

He recalled running down the stairs two at a time with his wife in his arms, running for the motor with Matthew at his heels, Mary, his mother-in-law and his baby daughter rushing after them in a second motor, in the frantic rush through the village and into the hospital. He remembered the black fear taking over his heart once again at the second onslaught of seizures before Dr. Clarkson administered a doze of tranquilizers and stationed oxygen beside the bed should the need arise. He could still remember the feeling of his baby daughter's weight against his chest after the wet nurse had placed her there, cheerfully reporting that she had eaten her fill and was quite content now.

Dr. Clarkson had sent her home two days later, declaring that there was no more cause for concern, at least for the baby, but her father had taken his wife's hand in his own and dared not follow his child as her grandmother took her away from the hospital.

As he had done every day for seven days now, Tom kissed his wife's palm, murmuring as he had on that night, "Please don't leave me, love. Please don't leave us."

The seizures did not end that day, and twice now, they had again feared the worse when for several minutes she would not respond to the administration of oxygen. Once she had been as she had that night, grey and still, and he had feared their battle was lost.

When they did not come, delirium was his enemy.

The very morning after that night, she had woken in confusion, screaming for her mother, asking where she was, and demanding why the new chauffeur was crying and holding her hand. That cut straight to the heart.

Three days ago, she had smiled at him and for a short while and he had reason to believe that perhaps the day would bring about the improvement they were waiting for until she asked for Martin and became hysterical when he answered that he did not know who Martin was. Mary saved the day in patiently telling her that Martin was still in the attics, where he had always been, explaining to her sister's husband who was also near hysterics that Martin was Sybil's favorite stuffed mouse, a present of their grandfather the day Sybil was born.

Most painful was last night when she, in a brief moment of clarity, had inquired after the baby. He had told her that she had already been taken back to Downton with the wet nurse. _But why on earth would she be in Dowton when we're here?_ Sybil had promptly asked, fear in her eyes. _Here, love?_ He answered. _Why should our daughter be in England when we're here in Dublin? Why is she there, Tom?_

 _I miss home, Tom. When are we going home? You promised we'd take a week end off, bring the baby with us to Malahide, even if only for a day._

Yet delirium at least was the lesser evil. It was painful, certainly, and cut to his core, often a choice between the loss of all they had survived together, from the confession in York to the life in Dublin they have built, or an exhibition of all the faults he had recently done.

Still, it offered him very little comfort.

* * *

They were alone, only the two of them, illuminated by only a soft shade of yellow, emanating from the lamp in the far corner of the nursery. There was no sound in the room but the faint noise of his daughter's soft baby breaths.

His mother-in-law begged him to go home to sleep, to see his daughter. Not for the first time, he refused, unwilling to leave Sybil's side, fearing the worst would come in his absence.

Cora had also been there all that time, only conceding to leave her daughter at night when Doctor Clarkson insisted that the ward was becoming too crowded, and even given the circumstances, he could only allow one visitor to stay with Sybil at all times. With no qualms, she had ceded the privilege to her son-in-law, after all, he was her daughter's next of kin now, a fact her own husband had so heartlessly overlooked that night. She refused to make that same mistake, and recognized that it was he who had everything to lose if –. Still, she returned faithfully every day just after the crack of dawn, a wicker basket for them both, a change of clothes for him, and always bursting with news of her granddaughter, recounting to him even the most insignificant details.

In those dark hours, Tom had been consoled by the realization that he had found a friend and an ally in his mother-in-law. Their love for Sybil had brought them together in the same camp and should war break out, he knew that they would fight on the same side.

She had refused his address of Lady Grantham, and from then on, he would only think of her as Cora.

But that night Cora was insistent and refused his no's as an answer.

Though still limited enough for comfort, Sybil's moments of lucidity had increased in number and there was, minuscule as it was, a decrease in her episodes. Not for one moment had he left her side, spare the very brief moments Mrs. Crawley had brought him to her house by force and shoved a decent meal down his throat as Molesley boiled hot water for his bath. But Cora pleaded that Sybil was a little better now, and he hadn't seen his daughter in almost two weeks.

"It is still very likely that she could lose her mother," she told him seriously. "But her father is still here. Sybil can't be here for her now, but you can. She needs you, Tom and I can't let my granddaughter be abandoned by either of her parents. Go, Pratt is waiting for you. I won't leave her alone for a single minute and I'll call you the moment anything changes."

His daughter's soft cries, letting him know she was awake, brought him back to the present.

She couldn't be hungry, he knew. Her nurse had informed him she had just been fed before she had been put down for a nap. Still he went to her and took her in his arms, swaying gently, settling on the rocking chair nearby.

"Shh, my darling. Shh," he whispered. "It's alright now. You're alright now."

The puckered lids opened to reveal his own eyes staring back at him. Soon, the wails had softened into soft coos as the baby studied her father. No doubt he was a stranger to her now. In her short life, he had spent much more time away from her than with her. Yet, she did not fret, as if she knew by instinct who he was. As if she had recognized his voice from the womb and knew that it was her father's arms that cradled her now.

"You just wanted my attention, aye? Just like your mother," he teased, running a finger down her apple cheek.

 _She's so beautiful._

How many times had had he looked at that tiny face since the day of her birth two weeks ago? When had he really studied he really studied the beautiful face before him and told himself that that was the face of his daughter? The truth was that in the panic and fear of the past days, he had not and with the changes two weeks had brought, it was as if he was looking at her again for the very first time.

The baby continued to watch him as he watched her.

In her rosebud mouth, he could see the miniature of Sybil's, and likewise in her nose. The shape of her face too was her mother's entirely, her ears, her cheeks, even the downy hair on top of the baby's head were already curling in a manner that told him that Sybil's hopes for their child's hair had not been granted – their daughter had inherited her unruly mane and it would be a job to tame it once she started school.

Gone were most of the newborn wrinkles and the pink skin of that night had already faded to her mother's alabaster.

The color of her hair was honey like his own, but that could still change over time. Barring that and her eyes, she was the image of the mother she may never meet – and for almost the entirety of her life, the father that she _did_ have had stayed away.

He knew without a doubt that Sybil would have his head if she knew.

Suddenly, the baby's mouth opened wide in a yawn but she did not fall back asleep. Instead she began to wriggle as if trying to break free from her swaddled clothing. Tom loosened the blankets a bit but the baby continued to squirm until her father conceded to undo the swaddling entirely.

"Quite demanding aren't you. Alright then, there you are. Better?"

The baby returned to her cooing in response.

It took a moment for Tom to realize that the sobbing came not from his daughter, but from himself and once it started, he could do little to stop the tears coming, pulling his daughter tighter against him.

"I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

He kissed his daughter's downy head, then her apple cheeks, kissing every part of him that he can, pleading forgiveness for her abandonment, yet almost unable to promise to do otherwise, not while her mother was still in danger.

"I'm so sorry, my darling girl, but I promise you we will get through this. We won't lose your Mama and whatever happens, the first thing she'll see when she wakes tomorrow, is you my little Sybil. You will be the first thing she'll see."


	2. deux - Cora

**AN:** I suppose I did find the motivation and the time frame for the rest but I didn't want to start posting again until after I've established exactly what I wanted to do with the other characters. As with the previous chapter, my medical knowledge is at zero and I've been employing my creative license a lot for this. Parts of the text of this chapter, and also of those that will follow, were lifted from the script so, clearly not mine.

Thanks so much for the reviews and please don't forget to do the same here! Next stop: Mary.

* * *

 _Cora_

The feeling returned more in the last few years. It was a feeling of loss because she gazed upon her grown-up daughter standing by the man she loved, declaring to all present that they were to be married, and she felt the phantom weight of the baby laid in her arms more than two decades ago as her mother-in-law, an edge to her voice, informed her that her third child was yet another girl. (Her husband had come to her that night, a too stiff smile etched upon his lips as he enthused too enthusiastically over the beauty of their last-born, declaring that of all their daughters, Baby Sybil resembled her mother the most, unable to disguise the disappointment she could read so plainly in his eyes.)

It was loss because, more than wondering where the years had gone, she wondered where she herself had fled to be so kept in the dark as her daughter became a woman, fell in love and found her place with her none the wiser. So, on that evening in 1919, she sent her husband to his dressing room, refusing to be consoled as she imagined her baby, blooming in a snow-white dress, waltzing down the aisle with her mother absent in the pews, missing one more great milestone along the way. And yet, she had forgiven Robert for that. She had forgiven him as she had forgiven him the night of their daughter's birth because she loved him, and because after that disappointment, after the fights and the screams that would follow many years later, she had once watched him bounce their beautiful baby in his lap and knew that he loved her too.

But she could not bear the sight of him tonight. As she stood before him in her night gown, still trembling with the fear of the past two days, her hand still feeling the slackened grip of that very same baby she first held over twenty years ago, she felt violated by his mere presence.

"How is Sybil?" he asked as he stepped away from the hallway and into her bedroom.

She refused to answer, uselessly tidying whatever she could see, looking anywhere but at him.

"I see. And has Tom gotten back yet?"

She could hear the tremor in his voice but she refused to rise to it. She wanted to make him suffer as he had made them suffer.

"The baby? Cora, please. I need to know."

"Where do you think he is, Robert?," she finally answered, shocked by the intensity of her voice, but she refused to back down, indifferent to who may hear. "Of course he won't leave her side! After he had nearly lost her? Where do you think he would go? He refuses to sleep and Mary and I can't even get him to take a single bite because he's so afraid of what will happen when he's gone. He loves her, Robert – anyone can see that! He loves her and if you could have acknowledged that fact at least then maybe we won't be having this conversation right now! The baby? She's marvelous because any minute now she could very well lose her mother! And Sybil? You better hope she survives this because I don't think I can ever look at you again if she –."

Out of the corner of her mind's eye, she saw their daughter aged six, her skirts stained, crying on the gravel as pebbles tore at her knees. Cora had ran to her then, the moment she had heard her child's cry, ignoring her mother-in-law's protests that that was Nanny's domain, her insides protesting every second that she was away from her suffering child. But Robert reached her first. She was already in his arms, wiping sticky, tear-stained hands on his tweed, when she arrived. He had always protested against her American sentimentality, but he was already kissing the injured part, whispering to the hiccupping child that she was alright now, because Papa had her. _It hurts_ , Sybil cried, _it hurts so much, Papa_. _Do you want Papa to kiss it better again, my darling?_ He answered.

That memory only served to enflame Cora's anger.

 _I have known her even before she was born. I cried when she came and I cried when she cried. She pulled away and I held on tighter. I'm her mother, of course I knew there was something wrong!_

 _But you've held her too! You've held her and you've wiped away her tears and soothed her! You were there when she took her first steps! You were the first man she's ever danced with! You sat her on your knee and promised her the world! You've told us countless of times how much you love her – how, then, can you listen to her screams, how can you see her tears, and still believe nothing was wrong?_

 _The insults in the drawing room._

 _The refusal to attend her wedding._

 _Preventing the family from sending her the tickets so that she could go back and be with us._

 _Have her choices made you love her any less, Robert? Have they made her any less your daughter?_

"Tapsell has a reputation as an expert –,"

"And you believed him," she cried, releasing the fear, tension and anger that had bubbled inside her in the last two days, searching for an outlet and seeing it in the man who stood before her, she wanted to do nothing less than to hurt him as much as she hurt. "When Doctor Clarkson knew Sybil's history and he did not. You believed Tapsell because he's knighted and fashionable and has a practice in Harley Street. You let all that nonsense weigh against saving our daughter's life. Which is what I find so very hard to forgive."

She could feel the tears running down her cheeks now, feel her face burning red in anger. Her arms ached for her daughter, lying so still as she left her that night in the hospital, all because her father had refused to see reason.

"Do you think I'm any less afraid for her than you are?"

She heard his voice cracking. What she saw before her was a broken man, and a small part of her felt elated. _Good_ , she thought. _I don't want him to feel anything less._ She felt the venom rise to her tongue, unwilling to be held back.

Once, she had forgiven him his flaws. She had forgiven him the distance he had imposed between her and her baby. But this, she could not forgive.

"I should think you're more afraid, since if she dies, you're the one who would have killed her."

"Cora…"

"I've already lost a child," she pursued, her voice trembling. "And I refuse to lose another. I won't have my baby in the cold, dark ground and I refuse to share my bed with my child's murderer. Please go, Robert, before you do any more damage."

"And Robert," she added cruelly as an aside, before the door had closed. "When Sybil wakes up, I won't hesitate to tell her the truth and your part in it."

* * *

Her life had become a paroxysm of a clear blur.

At the same time every morning, she ordered the motor, planted herself beside her son-in-law and began once again their vigil. She would hold her daughter's hand, forced strength as she held back tears during attacks, and a soothing smile in those episodes of delirium. Several times, she would also comfort Tom; sometimes, she would scold him for failing to see his daughter, fighting their corner as she had promised Sybil.

In those rare moments of peace in the ward, she would sometimes plead for a few moments with her daughter, appealing to her son-in-law that overlooking his own health would do nothing to help his wife, that his well-being would be their capital once she recovered and they could decide what to do next.

"Tom named her Sybil, my darling," she would whisper as she stroked her sleeping daughter's hair in those moments she was allowed to be alone with her baby. Often, she remarked how much older she looked with her hair cropped closed to her chin, how different from that young woman who descended the stairs in Grantham House, a woman now by the law. _But you're still my beauty._ "Because he said that he wants to remember you every time he looks at her. I don't know if he's told you yet but I believe it's quite appropriate, seeing as she looks exactly like you and we all think it's lovely. I've taken to calling her Sybbie. I hope you don't mind. Tom asked about it and I told him that I knew you would want her to grow up as her own person and he seemed pleased by that. Your father postured of course, but none of us are too pleased with him right now, not even Granny."

Other times, she would evoke episodes from her daughter's youth, or items of little importance, sometimes both. Often, she would relay to Sybil, things she had already relayed to Tom early in the morning. Things about her daughter, of how much she had grown in the days since Sybil has been moved to the hospital, of the personality quirks of the infant, so similar to her mother at that same age.

"Mary showed me the latest Vogue last night, before we turned in," she forced herself to laugh, after Isobel had all but dragged Tom for lunch at Crawley House, promising he could return to his wife's bedside in an hour. "There was a page she thought you might like. Apparently, some girls in the _Quartier Latin_ have taken to wearing those outrageous trousers you wore before your season. Mary says that since they're all the rage now, no doubt Sybbie could wear them when her time comes with no one even batting an eyelash! Nanny says she fussed quite a lot last night, after Tom left to go back here. I know she's too young to understand what's happening, but I think she misses you both darling and she needs her parents home with her."

At night, driven from her daughter until the next morning, she refused dinner and conceded only a change of clothes, retiring to the nursery where she cradled her baby's baby and took refuge in the one place in the house she had always regarded as her sanctuary. Refusing to seek comfort in the husband she could not forgive, forbidding herself to add more to the burdens of her daughters and her son-in-law, she turned to the baby as a balm to soothe her soul, only here allowing herself to truly hope that everything will be alright and that their family can make it through this unscathed.

(Almost thirty years ago, a young mother in a country not her own, when she still so keenly felt that the dollars she carried as her dowry were her only ticket to acceptance in this dizzying world, she would run to the nursery. There, she would hide after her mother-in-law berated her for another faux pas, after her father-in-law again looked at her with accusing eyes as if demanding of her why she had yet to produce the heir that would secure their dynasty. The weight of her babies in her arms, the sound of childish babble in her ears, even the cry of _Mama, Edith's pulled my hair!_ allowed her the respite to forget about all that and be in a world where there were still three little people who loved her unconditionally, three little girls that she determined would be her life's work.

She hadn't been in the nursery for years. Mary had long since stopped heeding her advice, Sybil had grown-up without her notice and Edith she never knew whether to worry over or not. But again, a granddaughter taking the place of her daughters, she found herself once again in this room, shooing Edith and Nanny so that she could allow herself to breathe.)

"Sybbie, precious," she cooed at the baby whose great, blue eyes were still wide open at this late hour. "You know your name now, don't you? Yes you do, you bright, little girl."

"You don't want to sleep, do you?" she conitnued. "That's alright, you can keep Granny company tonight. But you have to start sleeping on a schedule, my darling. Your Mama will need all the rest she can get when she goes home and I hope that would be soon. But that's alright for tonight. I promise not to tell Nanny that you're still awake. It will just be Sybbie and Granny. What do you think?"

The baby yawned and her grandmother could only laugh.

"You're the one breaking our deal!" she teased. "Do you know what Barrow found today in the attics? Your Mama's old toy mouse! We've sent him to the laundry and he'll be as good as new for you in two days' time. You'll want that won't you, your Mama's old Martin? And when your Mama comes home, she and your father can play with you and Martin. Doesn't that sound grand?"

She looked around the nursery, everything back in its place, looking as if no time has passed and her daughters had never left it. That was not true, of course, because it was Sybil's daughter she cradled in her arms and she was aware more than ever that she held the future, and change in her arms. Just as Sybil had wanted. Nonetheless, moments like this and she could not help but remember those times so long ago, when she held her own baby in her arms and she was almost her little girl's whole world.

 _We've looked after them_ , she thought. Willing her words to reach her daughter through the dark of the night. _"We've looked after them both, don't you worry. But we need you to come back to us now, my darling. Tom needs his wife and Sybbie needs her mother and I need my baby back too. Come back to us, my Sybil._

"Your Mama and I used to do this quite a lot when she was a baby," she whispered, watching the wee thing fight sleep. "And when your Mama comes home, she'll be the one rocking you here and tucking you into bed and wiping your tears and when you get older, you'll fight over your clothes like we did and over many other things but she's the one you'll run to when you fall in love and she'll comfort you during your first heartbreak, but Granny will do for now, won't she?"

She kissed the forehead of her only grandchild, continuing to rock while whispering sweet nonsense. Her last thought before sleep claimed her in the early hours of the next day, was her hope that it would bring a different day.

* * *

"You're still awake," she started at the sight of her firstborn already clad in her nightgown, dark curls dancing on her shoulders. In Cora's eyes, her daughter looked no older than twelve.

"I can't sleep," Mary answered and her mother could see the tension in her shoulders. "Can I, if I'm not pushing in?"

"Of course." Yet she could not shake the worry in her voice. "But where's Matthew?"

"He fell asleep ages ago. I think calming Tom's nerves today exhausted him but I know he's glad everything went without a scratch."

"I have to admit, Tom looked as if he was at the state of collapse today. For a minute there, I was afraid Father Dominic would exorcise him for fretting so during the service. But I don't think we can fault him for that, given what he's been through."

Even now, their laughter still felt unnatural and forced, as if they still waited for the earth to fall from under their feet. How many times today did she need to remind herself to exhale and be happy, to recognize that what they had been waiting for has finally arrived and they can breathe again now?

"Mama," Mary continued, still standing on the threshold. "Can I stay with you for a while?"

"Of course, my darling." Because now she knew exactly what this was about. She pulled the covers and invited her daughter to crawl in, then stroked her curls and held her in her arms as if she was a little girl again, as if she was Cora's little girl again.

"I think Papa's quite taken with her, Sybbie I mean. However aloof he pretends to be. I think he's finally thrilled about his first grandchild now that – well, it was good of Tom to invite him to the baptism after all."

"Mary," Cora exhaled, knowing how hard this all was for her too. "I can't forgive your father, not yet."

For many minutes, they withdrew into companionable silence. Reflecting on the whirlwind of events that left them feeling scared, helpless and angry, alternatively. This peace was only most welcome.

"Sybil looked beautiful today," Cora began after a while, as if testing the air. Not expecting a response but not fretting when she received one.

"She did." Mary smiled.

"She's still so pale and it would take a while for her to look like her old self again, but she looked so happy with Sybbie in her arms and Tom by her side and I think that made all the difference."

"It was the same on her wedding. She bought her dress ready-made in a shop by the corner of the marketplace and Edith and I were so horrified, we begged her to let us buy another since she would get married only once and she deserved something better, but she won't have any of it. But when she walked down the aisle, her smile could have lit up the sky and I don't think any expensive dress could have done her justice that day."

Cora took that in, never tiring of hearing and imagining that milestone which she missed. How greatly had she feared, in the past weeks, that she would also miss all that should have followed, with no chance of atoning for her earlier sins.

"Mary?"

"Mama?"

"Do you remember," she paused, smiling at the memory of her small daughters together, newborn Sybil in her Mary's arms, before continuing. "That day after Sybil was born and you ran to me because Nanny said how unfortunate it was that the baby was another girl? Do you remember what you did?"

Cora felt her daughter nod and knew that the wetness on her sleeves meant the onset of tears.

"I took Sybil from her bassinet and ran to your room, then begged you to dismiss our horrible Nanny without a reference. I think it's a miracle that I didn't break any bones that day. I was quite brutal with my dolls, not like Sybil. She was always nursing them and pretending they scraped their knees so she can 'kiss them all better'. I remember how much I wanted to strangle Patrick when he stole Martin so he could burn him at the stake. Sybil won't stop crying until she had tied handkerchiefs on his feet as bandages."

"You were always so protective of her and she always looked up to you. I believe Edith resented your bond when you three were little."

Mary had to laugh at that, but her mother could still hear her cracking voice behind it. "Edith resented everyone then… Mama?"

"Yes?"

"Edith ran into them in the nursery. She said they were playing with the baby and Sybil kept refusing to retire to their room. She said Sybil was adamant that the baby would spend the night with them and Tom didn't protest. Edith said it seems as if Tom thinks that Sybil's up to it."

"Your sister was always stubborn," Cora answered, still smoothing her daughter's hair as she had not done in so many years.

"Edith agrees with them though, and I think I do too."

Cora only nodded.

"Mama?"

"Hmm?"

"Sybil's alright now isn't she? We won't lose her again?" The tone in which her strong and unbreakable daughter uttered those words, looking at her mother for reassurance as if merely the sound of her mother's voice could break all evil spells and make her wishes a reality, was what finally broke Cora.

With a great unearthly noise, she collapsed onto her daughter's shoulder, crying as she had never cried in her life, as she heard her daughter echo her anguish, both of them holding to each other for dear life as they had never done even when Mary was a little girl tearfully asking when her father will come home from the war. These were things they were unafraid of showing the other because they were a perfect reflection of what each felt.

The fear of lost, the pain, the tension. They chose to share these now.

Cora knew that tonight, all her daughter needed was to be her mother's daughter again and all she needed was to be her daughter's mother once more.

"Yes, my darling," Cora said when she found her voice again. "She's alright now. Our Sybil has really come back to us."


	3. trois - Mary

**AN:** Fair warning, the turn of my writing here was turning a tad too dramatic, and the ending was perhaps a little similar with the previous chapter, but I felt the things here had to be said. Still, this is one of my favorite relationships in the show and I hope you'll enjoy reading this as much as I did writing it. Again, medical knowledge at zero, so please let that pass.

Thanks again for the reviews. Next stop: Robert.

* * *

 _Mary_

It was towards the closing of her first season, late in the summer of 1910. She remembered the flush of imagined freedom, of the feeling of her aching muscles spent with nights of what she perceived was endless dancing, of dance cards filled to the brim accompanied by the attention of bright-eyed bachelors, and of the blush still coloring her cheeks as she reluctantly changed into her nightgown. She was eighteen, she was popular and she was beginning to learn how to use that to her advantage. The belle of the ball and she believed the world in her hands.

Then the announcement at dinner, too elaborate for one that involved only the family. Papa's and Cousin James' too enthusiastic declarations, Mama's helpless resignation and Granny's too pragmatic solutions, Edith's prolonged silences and pale pallor and Sybil's youthful indignation, Patrick's evasion of her questioning gaze. What camaraderie they had, she knew then was over, as was her childhood. Still, she took it all with good grace, nodding in assent to all they said but fearing all the while that her voice will betray her.

In the solitude of her more cramped quarters, she struggled to reconcile herself to this harsh reality, wanting nothing more than to cry alone in confusion, frustration and loss but Sybil climbed into her bed that night, as she had done several times when they were little girls, preparing for a round of confidences and never had Mary been capable of denying her anything.

"Will you do it, Mary?" Sybil whispered, voicing the very question she dared not ask herself.

"I suppose so – what else can I do?"

"So you love him? Patrick, I mean."

"I don't dislike him," she answered, her voice shaking because that was no longer the truth but she did not want to give Sybil a reason to follow suit. "Besides, I think that hardly counts in families like ours."

"Well I think it should, if you want a chance at being happy," she retorted, defiant.

"Darling, I don't believe that matters either."

"You can say no, you know."

"I don't think I can, Sybil."

"Why not?"

"You won't understand."

"Then make me!"

Even in her anguish, Mary felt an unexplainable need to protect her baby sister, still so naïve and unworldly at fourteen – and how much she wanted to keep her that way! How much she wanted to preserve that innocence that made her sister so sweet and sympathetic, the only person in their small, but ferocious world who saw beyond the coldness and the feigned indifference.

"You'll understand when you're older," she answered, finding no better response and anticipating the inevitable, knowing well enough that no combination of words could incite Sybil's fury more. But it had never come.

Her sister held her hand as if she was pleading again for Mary to come with her to the village fair because no one would take her. _Edith wouldn't want her dress to get dirty, but you'll do it for me, won't you, Mary?_

"Whatever it is, Mary," Sybil answered, speaking as though she was looking back from the future. "I don't believe it's worth sacrificing a lifetime's chance at happiness."

It was peculiar, but Mary felt an odd sense of relief that the war had at least spared her the chance of comforting her broken hearted-sister over the discovery of a similar inescapable destiny. Still, nine years later, their roles reversed, she would still climb into her sister's bed on the eve of Sybil's departure from England, acutely conscious of the fact that this would be the last time she would do so. They were coming to the end of a shared life and experiences, and in a few weeks, they would not even share the same country, nor the same name.

"Do you love him?" she needed to ask, an echo of her baby sister's question that evening so long ago, no less important now than it was then.

"Mary –,"

"It's only a question. I don't mean anything else by it," she retorted, nipping her sister's defenses in the bud. "Do you truly love Branson?"

"Of course I do, very, very much." Sybil smiled, her whole countenance transforming. "Tom, he – he lets me breathe. I don't belong here and he knows that but when I'm with him, I feel as if I can see more than all of this, be more than all of this. I can leave Lady Sybil behind and become something better and – of course you think this is all mad."

And she wanted nothing more than to echo that sentiment, to call it a juvenile folly and employ whatever means in her disposition to keep her here. But she watched as the eyes of the baby she had known almost all her life sparkled, how her smile came so naturally, how her cheeks blushed and flushed, how she came into herself despite them all, and how her whole being bespoke of happiness and Mary knew that she was incapable of inflicting such cruelty.

 _She loves him, it's as simple as that_. She knew that much because she understood it too. As a tableaux of her own follies played through her psyche – a garden party long ago, a departing train, melodies in an amateur concerto, she felt pride in the younger sister who had thwarted her foolish examples and against all odds, chose happiness as she had advised her older sister to do, that night so many years ago.

Tears rose to her throat, the last weapon in her arsenal.

"Then you're completely sure about all this."

She knew the answer before it was spoken, felt it long before she had brought her sister home from the border.

"I am."

As with that night, she felt Sybil take her hand and squeeze it, a greater comfort than anything else.

"Mary," she whispered into the deepening night. "It doesn't mean I'm leaving you."

* * *

"How is she?" she asked, stepping into the ward to relieve her mother and coming face-to-face with her brother-in-law.

At this point, she had lost all track of time, the days blurring into one nightmare after another. Despite what the nurses, her mother-in-law and Doctor Clarkson parroted, she still found it difficult to see the so-called light at the end of the tunnel. Insignificantly, she noted that it was still dawn.

"The same," Tom answered, his voice audibly numb, as she settled in the seat across him on Sybil's other side. "She woke and asked me if I could run down to the vegetable seller on Moore Street so she can cook a stew for dinner. She couldn't understand why weren't in Dublin then she fell asleep some minutes later. I can't tell whether that's a good thing or not."

"Good, of course. Granny always says no news is good news," she heard herself respond, with no real conviction. "You know, I never thought Sybil could cook. Even during her nursing, I thought it was some practical joke that would blow up in her face."

"She can't," he answered, the humor in his voice forced. "And I never thought you the type to subscribe to that."

"To what?"

"'No news is always good news.'"

"I suppose I'm not," she laughed bitterly, not knowing what else to answer to that. She found herself asking instead, partly to keep the mournful silence at bay, and partly because she was sincerely curious, "Have you written to your family yet?"

That caught him off-guard.

She did not fault him – it was just as hard for her to be reminded that people existed outside of this and that life has happened and carried on beyond their own tragedies. A good number of them had fallen into their own dark, little world and several times, Matthew had tried to recall her, at least in part, to the land of the living, just as she had done to Tom in this instant.

 _I'm going soft_ , she thought. But then, Sybil had always brought out the softness in her.

"Does your mother know she has a new granddaughter?" she repeated, not unkindly. "She must have begun to wonder. After all, the baby was due weeks ago."

"No," he answered tentatively. "With Sybil here and everything that's happened, I suppose I've just forgotten to. Not writing it down makes everything that happened a little less real, I think. I've no doubt Mam will have my skin for that."

"I'll write to her if you want," she offered. "She's met me at your wedding so it won't be too much of a shock."

"No, I'll do it. She'll never forgive me if she hears about it all from anyone else, though God knows when I'll find the time to do that."

Not for the first time, she was startled by how altered he looked. To describe him as gaunt was an understatement. It was a transformation that had taken but two weeks and it was clear that Isobel's interventions did little more than ensure his survival to the next day. Darkness encircled his eyes but that was nothing next to the desperation in them. His skin was becoming almost as pale as Sybil's. She remembered him not so long ago as a groom, grinning as if he had been granted all his heart's desires. Now he looked like a man on the verge of losing it all.

"Tom," she pursued, watching as his eyes never left the sleeping form of her sister, watching every rise and fall of her chest. "You have to look after yourself too, you know. You won't help Sybil by making yourself ill and I doubt she'll thank you for that."

"But what else can I do?"

She heard his voice break, and before she realized what she was doing, she stood from her chair and had already crossed the room and had taken him into her arms, running a calming hand against his back as she had done to Sybil so many times before, murmuring comforting words that to her surprise, came naturally.

She felt the wetness of tears seep through her blouse and in a small corner of her mind she wondered what her late grandfather might have said at the sight of her and the former chauffer, exchanging tears and holding each other for support. Yet, she felt protective of him – for Sybil's sake and then for his own, the man who had taken her baby sister away and who now refused to leave her side. Whatever her doubts, she could ask nothing more of the brother she now comforted.

"I can't bear to be without her," Tom cried pitifully against her shoulder and with no qualms, she found that she believed him.

Seconds passed before she found her words again, not quite an answer to his plead but stronger in conviction, she believed.

"I lied that night in the inn, when I told you I was fairly certain I can bring her round," she added, anticipating his confusion. "When we chased you to the border and I forced her to return with us, do you remember?"

He nodded and she knew the futility of her question. Of course he did.

"I've known my sister her whole life and I still know her better than almost everyone. If anything, I was absolutely certain that I could _not_ bring her round. I knew that as soon as I read her letter."

"I suppose I knew that too," he answered as he found his voice, the crack still discernible. "Once I finally cooled down."

"She's not going anywhere, Tom," she continued, and as soon as she said the words, she knew they were true. "She's already gone too far to give-up over something as trivial as this."

* * *

She stepped into their bedroom, long since changed into her nightgown and covered only by her sleeping robe – her sister's influence she would argue, should anyone ask, expecting to find nothing more than the soft orange glow of the lamp but instead encountering the wide-awake figure of her husband, reading a series of documents by the orange light in their bed.

"I thought you'd be asleep," she said as she disposed of her robe and pulled back the covers on the side opposite him.

"Your side was cold, that's what woke me," he answered. "You're still awake – it's late."

She nodded, settling into the crook of his arms and stifling a yawn.

"I was in the nursery. Sybbie refused to sleep and Sybil didn't want to leave her so I kept her company. We haven't had much chance to talk lately so there you go."

"I can't imagine you had much chance either, what with an insomniac infant."

"No. But it was still nice, being able to spend time again with my sister, after everything that's happened."

"And Tom raised no objections to that, over Sybil staying up too? I know that's why he didn't fight when Robert insisted on keeping Nanny for a while longer. "

"He made a fuss of course, but Sybil got tired of his mother hen-ing and insisted he leave us girls alone," Her laugh still felt almost forced, but she felt it coming back to her now, in little bits and pieces. "Although I doubt he took his scolding lying down. He's probably imagining a hundred worst case scenarios at this moment, poor man. He needs to get out more."

"That he does," Matthew agreed, absently running his fingers down her hair. "I'll take him out tomorrow. I'm sure Sybil will agree. Besides, I'm in desperate need of alternative company to your father."

"Is it really that bad?"

"Perhaps, or perhaps I'm overreacting, but I do not a break and I know Tom needs it more than I do."

She realized, without giving it any real thought, how strange it was that the subject of their bedtime conversations in the last weeks had evolved to revolve around Sybil, Tom and Sybbie, with the occasional reference to her father, but there was no helping it she supposed. Should their luck hold, things would return to normal soon enough and she had to admit that she waited for that day with baited breath.

"How are you Mary?" Matthew asked, his eyes watching her in serious contemplation, breaking through her silent reverie.

"Better, I suppose," she answered tentatively. "Doctor Clarkson says there's a much greater chance of her getting through even if there remains a minimal risk. Still, she's acting more like herself now and that's something to celebrate, but that's something I need to get used to again, I suppose."

"I wasn't asking about Sybil, Mary." Her husband retorted, his voice piercing and serious. "I know that she's improving. All I have to do is look at you, Tom or your mother to know that. I've heard her playing with the baby and arguing with your father. I was asking about _you_."

She startled at that, because, after all, in the last weeks, her baby sister's chances of survival mirrored perfectly her own well-being. They've spent so much time worrying about Sybil that it felt strange to worry about other matters.

"Me?" she answered, her voice not quite steady under his gaze. "I'm perfectly fine."

"Are you?"

"Where are you getting at, Matthew?"

"Nowhere. I simply wanted to know because everyone's asked Tom and your mother that endlessly, you included, but no one's asked you. So now, I'm asking."

"I hardly think that's important right now, Matthew."

"For everyone else, perhaps, but Sybil's alright now. At the end of the day, you know that as much as I do. But I don't really believe you are."

"Matthew…"

"Mary, I've seen you naked and held you in my arms. I know the real you. You don't have to hide from me."

"No, I don't." She shook her head, trying to fight tears but she knew it was to no use. She was transparent to him and he knew that as well as she, and she had yet to allow herself to cry, to truly cry, because there was everyone else to mind – Sybil, her mother, Tom, comforting her father, finding a nurse and a Nanny for the baby – before she could allow herself that luxury, and now that it was almost over, she had realized how greatly it had all welled up.

A choking sob escaped her and Matthew pulled her closer, pressing soft kisses to her temple, conveying that it was alright, she can cry now. She did not have to be the strong one any longer. In the confines of their bedroom with no one but them, he could be that for her now.

"Shh…," he whispered, repeating the words she had said to everyone but herself. "Shh, it's alright now. She'll be alright now."

"She fell off her horse when she was five, Sybil," she whispered to his chest, her tears blurring her words, but the nodding against her hair informed her that he understood. "I remember hearing screaming and it wasn't until Granny took me away that I realized it was me. I saw her thrown off and she looked so lifeless that I thought she was dead. Edith ran back inside to call for Mama but I couldn't move."

Her body chilled in recollection, in the connection of that sight to that night; her baby sister unmoving under her sight, all color drained from her face and Mary, unable to do anything to prevent it. Other memories resurfaced then – watching Sybil slip as they skated across the lake, falling the last three steps in the stairs at Grantham House, blood trickling down her face after that night at the count – but none were so powerful as those two.

"She was only unconscious," she continued, taking her husband's silence as a sign to pursue. "Doctor Clarkson said it was only a concussion and of course she woke with a bad headache. Papa was furious, he dismissed our Nanny on the spot and Mama stayed with Sybil in the nursery. I begged her to be allowed to stay too because I was afraid something would happen when I was asleep. Nothing did of course and two weeks later, she was back on her saddle, but I was so afraid. But she was alright after all… She's alright."

She cried some more, not knowing now that she begun, if she had the power to stop. But Matthew never tired of holding her, of running a hand through her back and of pressing his lips to her hair. For the first time in so long, she felt she could breathe again.

"She's alright now," she repeated, as if saying it again would make it sound more true to her.

"She is," Matthew confirmed. "And you can rest now, my darling."


	4. quatre - Robert

**AN:** I'm sorry if this is too cruel, but from the beginning, I really couldn't see it going any other way. This is the penultimate chapter and thak you so, so much for going through this with me. Please don't forget the reviews and next stop, the terminus, Sybil.

* * *

 _Robert_

He found himself in the nursery's corridor without knowing how he ended there, at the end of these many wanderings when he drifted from to room like a phantom, avoiding all and wishing nothing more than to avoid himself.

In a corner of his mind, Robert registered that he had not walked this part of the house since his own daughters were children, yet, as if pulled by an invisible leash, he found himself subconsciously taking steps and turning the door's knob, following the sound of soft baby noises. His eyes scanned the room and landed on the sight of his second daughter in the rocking chair, swaying her arms in an attempt to lull the fussing child back to sleep.

"Papa?" Edith called when he came into sight, illuminated by the orange light of the lamp. "I sent Nanny down to have dinner. I told her I can watch over the baby for a while."

He nodded, walking towards them but not knowing what else to do.

"How is she?" he heard himself asking.

"Wonderful, I think. She still won't settle down to a schedule but other than that, I think she's doing marvelously, given the circumstances."

"And Sybil?"

"Asleep now. Tom and Mary are with her...Papa?"

"Yes?"

"Would you mind terribly watching her for a while? Only, there's something I really must finish tonight and send to London in the morning and Nanny shouldn't take too long now. Mama usually comes in about this time but I believe something's come up about dinner tomorrow and…"

"Well, I…"

"Thanks, Papa. You're a dear."

Before he could answer, she placed a hurried kiss against his cheek, passed the baby to his open arms and was gone. In the quiet of the room, he realized that for the first time, he found himself in the presence of his granddaughter.

A month old and not once had he dared look at her face, afraid of who he would find there.

For a long moment, he stood frozen in the silence until the stillness was broken by the baby's cries, furious at the disruption and her passage into the arms of this imbecile who knew not the first thing about calming babies.

Unwittingly, he realized that the last time he had heard a baby's cries was twenty-four years ago, during Sybil's own infancy, also the last time he had held a child in his arms – the very child he had come so close to losing and who he may still very well lose.

He felt his body start to tremble and the tears he dared not shed in the past weeks rose, as in a storm, to his throat and to his eyes.

Her screams came back to him now, as they did regularly, a peculiar collection of memories – the cries of an infant girl screaming in his arms, unfamiliar with the almost-stranger holding her; the cries of a little girl, running to him in tears because Patrick had again deemed her too young to join in their games; the cries of frustration of an adolescent at dinner, forced into her first corset; the cries of fury of a young woman insisting that she, too, had a voice of her own (she had also passionately defended him that night, the father of the other little girl he now held in his arms; in the aftermath, Robert had often wondered if, had he made good on his threat, would things have turned out differently or would he have simply accelerated the inevitable?), then the cries of that last night – piercing, horrible, pleading for a relief.

 _My head! My head hurts so! It's splitting!_

In all her life, never had he heard the sound of desperation escape the lips of his brave and rebellious little girl. It cut him to his core, made him feel powerless – but that wasn't exactly true, was it? Already, she was so far from him, in recent months she was almost a stranger. Perhaps that's what made it simpler for him to believe that all was going as it should. After all, he had never been adept in confronting harsh realities that put into question all he believed in.

(He also had very sharp memories of Sybil bursting into the drawing room in that ungodly attire, and then standing by Tom's side ready to throw away all of the world he had so painstakingly worked to build around her, that night in the dining room when she and Isobel conspired behind his back, _nursing_ – so often, he had wondered if he was already on the path to losing the child who stood waltzing on his toes, the very first time she had danced with a man. In those years, there were few places he felt so lost as when he was in her presence.)

And he had very well paid the price.

 _Do you promise there's no more monster, Papa?_

 _I promise, my darling. And if it comes back, I promise I'll protect you again._

Still, Robert had not dared visit her in the hospital. He passed in a trance, neither here, nor there, avoiding his daughter's childhood bedroom.

Not that he found much relief in sympathy – Tom, in the rare moments he was persuaded to leave Sybil's side, shook in fury in his presence, Cora deigned to address him only to repeat that he was no better than a murderer, Edith's attention was entirely occupied by the baby, Mary was infinitely kinder – she was her father's little girl after all, but her loyalty, ultimately, was to her baby sister, and Matthew stood firmly by Mary's side, his mother fretted over the state of his marriage, but not once had she consented to relieve him of his guilt – she, too, had no doubts on who was to blame ( _If there's one thing that I am quite indifferent to, it's Sir Philip Tapsell's feelings_ – hadn't she told him that once?).

The bundle in his arms did not stop crying and he stood at a daze, not knowing what to do and wondering for the umpteenth time what was taking the blasted nanny so long to finish her dinner. He swaying to no avail. The child would not be comforted and he wanted nothing but.

He found himself struggling to breathe, struggling to keep calm, wanting nothing more than to get out of this space that forced him to confront everything from his beliefs to his fears to what had happened and what could have happened.

 _I refuse to share my bed with my child's murderer._

The baby continued to fuss and he searched for something, anything that may relieve her but no bottle in sight, all that was left was a relic of Sybil's babyhood, a tattered old mouse his father had given her as a half-hearted consolation for being born female like the other two.

Increasingly desperate, Robert snatched the toy from the crib and dangled it in front of the child. To his surprise, the wailing stopped and was replaced by soft baby coos. The child raised her arms as if reaching, her blue eyes transfixed on the object that hang just beyond reach, emitting sounds of frustration at not being able to grab it in her tiny fists, flinging them like a cat before a piece of string.

Despite himself, he found himself suppressing a laugh and repeated his proceedings to the delight of his now giggling granddaughter. Unconsciously, he found his eyes locked on her tiny, attentive face and the aborted tears returned in full force, choking at his throat.

All he saw was his youngest daughter. The same rosebud lips that, years ago, he believed were the replica of Cora's, the same apple cheeks that would blush rose after a run through the park, accompanied by muddied dresses and matted hair, the same dainty nose, the same forehead, the same thick hair that was already curling into unmanageable spirals. The baby's eyes were the same blue as her father's and she had his honey-colored hair, but all else was only Sybil.

Sybil.

Even with his reservations he could see it now. How can she but anything but?

His Sybil's little Sybil.

His granddaughter watched him curiously for a few moments, then, not understanding why their game had come into an end, she began to fuss again, squealing and raising her arms towards the mouse her grandfather held. His tears came in a torrent and instinctively, he held her closer, hardly understanding what he was doing but knowing that he needed her proximity for his sanity. The baby cried in frustration and their cries mingled in this orange-hued room that once heard only the happy voices of three little girls without a care in the world but now echoed nothing but the anguished cry of adults and that of a little girl who may never know her mother.

She understood nothing yet, of course, but Robert understood enough for the both of them and his daughter's baby in his arms, he saw that dark and imagined future. Sybil gone and her daughter looking him in the eye, demanding his part in all of it – _one day she'll understand and she'll have only me to blame._

 _Grandpapa, where is my Mama? Why do all the other children have a Mama and I don't?_

"I'm sorry," he cried as he collapsed onto the rocking chair, baby Sybil still in his arms. "I'm so, so sorry, my darling girl. Please forgive me."

* * *

There was nothing more he had ever wanted to forget, to erase from his mind's eye, to scratch away from his thoughts if necessary, yet he doubted that he would ever forget that moment as long as he lived.

To recall it, all of it, still made him tremble.

He was not privy to the fact that over the past month that followed that night, she had asked for everyone – Tom, Cora, Mary and Sybbie, she always begged for – yet she had not once asked for him, never wondered why he had not come to see her.

Once, sitting before his firstborn in an empty dinner table, almost devoid of occupants, he asked, in a voice he strove to keep neutral, whether he may visit Sybil. He remembered Edith averting her gaze and Matthew startling at his question, his panicked eyes landing on Mary. "Robert, I –," But his daughter, dark circles under her eyes, cut her husband and smiled sadly at her father. "Not yet, Papa. Let them be first, but not yet."

A part of him agreed that he deserved nothing less. It was enough that Sybil survived but asking her to forgive him was something else entirely. Yet, a greater part of him, becoming more desperate each day, argued that he had only done what he thought was right, what he thought was best for his daughter and her child. Never would he have resisted if he thought it would cost them both.

 _But you did_ , echoed a voice incessantly inside his head. _It was no longer your place but you resisted. It is her husband's place now but you did not believe the decision was his to make. But Cora understood that. Cora knew there was something wrong. Yet it was easier for you to trust a man's title than accept the collapse of your reality. You preferred your comfort to your daughter's safety and now you've almost killed them both._

In the days that followed, since Doctor Clarkson had declared that Sybil was well enough to go home, that the danger was greatly minimized, if not completely eradicated, Cora had acted as a guard dog by their daughter's room, while Tom was the guard dog who stayed by her side, both barring him entry. Their message was clear – not until Sybil spoke otherwise, he was unwelcome here.

 _I see things in the paper that would make her laugh, I come inside to tell her that her favorite rose is in bloom,_ he wanted to tell them, pleading for the mercy neither would give and of which the rest were reluctant to try to persuade them otherwise.

He was a pariah in his own home and it was a month since he had last seen his daughter.

At times, he relieved his solitude by remembering the child he once knew. He would imagine her running around the halls, trailing mud up the stairs, Mary at her heels, ready to catch her should she slip and Edith shaking her head in exasperation. He would hear again the laughter in her voice as he waltzed her round the saloon in London, that summer after her first season. He would watch her in concentration over a book in the library, only to shut it close, marching outdoors with it clasped tightly in her hands, because he had no time to spare to debate with her. He would again feel the fear that clasped at his heart when she entered her bedroom, hair matted with blood, the result apparently, of once more disobeying his orders. If he closed his eyes and concentrated hard enough, he would see her, again fussing in Cora's lap, begging to be let down. She had taken her first steps then, to everyone's amazement, all because her screams were insufficient to remind him that he had forgotten to pass her back her toy mouse. It was a morbid exercise, remembering her as if she was already gone, but that was all that was left to him.

His memories and his granddaughter.

Still, he found himself wandering the corridors since her return, the foil of his actions when her life was in danger and his guilt paramount, for what reason he could not truly verbalize, and one day he stopped before her slightly opened door, standing back as Doctor Clarkson hurried past, without so much as a word.

She was cradling Sybbie in her arms when he arrived, laughing softly, and whispering things that only her husband and child could hear. The image was so sweet that Robert found himself frozen, committing to memory this side of his daughter to remember and look back on at a later date.

But Cora's eyes met his and in an instant, she had run to the door in an attempt to block his passage, Tom, only becoming aware of his presence, stood as if readying for a fight by fists or by words. Yet Sybil had already seen him, and from where he stood in the doorway, he watched her tighten her hold on her daughter with one hand and clutch Tom's hand with the other, clinging to both as if holding on for dear life. Her lips opened to emit an other-worldly sound of fear which the surprised baby began to mimic.

"Sybil," he felt himself saying, hardly knowing what he was doing, and her eyes looked everywhere but at his own.

He looked at his daughter as if seeing her for the first time. He noted the circles under her eyes, the paleness of her pallor and the gauntness of her frame, the transformation from the happy, young mother was instantaneous. Yet nothing could match what he could see in the eyes that trembled under his pleading gaze.

 _And Robert, when Sybil wakes up, I won't hesitate to tell her the truth and your part in it._

For years, faced with her rebellions and fearing that he won't be able to bridge the growing distance between them, he often hoped that he could instill in her even just the tiniest amount of fear of authority, of fear of him – perhaps, that's what would bring her back. Now that he had succeeded, he wanted nothing more than to reverse it all. _Take it all back, please._

 _Didn't you promise to protect me, Papa?_ He could read. _Didn't you once held me in your arms and promised me the world? Did the man I love and our choices offend you so much to change all that? When did I stop being your daughter? Am I so offensive to you that you chose to deny my husband his rightful place that night and to condemn my child to the death sentence you have given me?_

Mere months ago, she beamed as she ran to him, convinced that he had wanted to see her again, after everything, that it was he who had sent the money to cover their passage. Yet, it was he who had forbidden everyone from extending the money that would accompany the invitation home. It was also he who had forbidden Cora from following their older daughters to Dublin, to witness their baby's wedding. Still, she had loved him and forgiven him, beamed as he walked her sisters down the aisle and celebrated their engagements while her own had been met only with insults.

 _Oh, my darling girl. Please forgive me._

"I think you should leave, Robert," Cora intoned, her voice cold and protective. She saw him as the enemy and already she declared herself as her daughter's champion. Behind her, he could see Tom attempting to calm Sybil and the baby but the intention in his eyes, echoing Cora's, was no less clear.

 _Go!_

The baby's cries, gained in intensity and within minutes, the wet nurse was curtsying past him into the room, running to take the child from her mother.

"Milady, if I could just…"

"I'll do it, please. She's my daughter, I should...I've already missed so much."

"Not yet, love," he heard Tom whisper as Sybil resisted. He watched their silent communication and felt like an intruder on their intimacy. "Doctor Clarkson says a few more weeks. Mrs. Rose will bring her back here as soon as she's finished, I promise."

"But…"

"She has to eat, love, and you need to rest. Just for a while."

He watched his daughter choke back a sob as she nodded, the wet nurse rushing past him into the far confines of the nursery. When he looked at her again, the fear in her eyes had vanished and evolved into something else entirely.

She no longer hesitated to look him in the eye.

Her child no longer in her arms, she studied him with contempt, as if conveying that all the pain she had faced and that was yet to come, as if all her suffering was due to him.

His youngest daughter regarded him with nothing less than a burning hatred.

That was another image that will be stay forever with him.

A month later he would pass by his wife's room on the way to the nursery and he would hear her strained voice mingling with that of their daughter. He pictured them whispering on the bed as they often had when Mary was a little girl and which had not done for so many years now. He would press his ears against the door and linger, desperate for the news no one would dare share with him.

A round of reminiscing was followed by Mary's choked voice and the sound of shifting, no doubt of Cora comforting her.

"Sybil's alright now, isn't she?" He heard Mary cry. "We won't lose her again?"

"Yes, my darling. She's alright now."

Cora's voice cracked, a strange mingle of desperation and relief, feelings held back that bubbled to the surface as he very well knew, yet, he could not listen to the rest of his wife's answer and he instead found himself pacing away from her door, moving as noiselessly as he can. He felt his chest constrict and the pain rise through his body.

He found himself in front of the nursery, desperate for the granddaughter who was all he had left of Sybil. From the first moment he held her, he knew without doubt that she would always be his unquestioned favorite, if only for that reason. He longed to take her in his arms, to act silly as he would never dare to do elsewhere, to tell her of things she would not yet understand, but now, she was his only confidant. He opened the door slowly but was only met by the orange light of the lamp and an empty crib – not even the tattered mouse was in its place.

In his solitude, he felt his loss and in this privacy, he finally allowed himself to weep.

Yes, their Sybil had returned. But he knew without a doubt, now more than ever, that he had lost her forever.


	5. cinq - Sybil

**AN:** We've come to the end and I'd like to thank everyone so much for sticking around until this. I won't say anything more than the usual, ignore my medical nonsense and well, we've braved the storm of this show together so we more than deserve alternatives like this. Thanks so, so much and please don't forget to review.

 _Je vous aime!_

* * *

 _Sybil_

It was on late November, or early December, that ambiguous season in between autumn and winter when the cold began to creep into her fingers but not yet cold enough (and too wasteful still) to splurge on coal to warm their nights, that she found herself alone in an empty bandage cupboard in the ward, hiding from Matron, and trying, but failing to stem her tears, her hand pressed to her still flat abdomen.

 _Well, what do you think happens when two people fall into bed together, lass?_ She could almost hear her mother-in-law mocking.

Of course she knew what _could_ happen, she was a nurse for Heaven's sake! _But I never thought it would happen so soon._

Not now when everything was still so new and impassioned and she feared the moment that it would come into an end. Not now that money was low, and they were earning barely enough to survive on – and when Matron finds out, _Nursing will be finished for me until after the baby. What will we do then?_ Not now when every morning and every evening that she set out for work, amidst the gunshot and the bloodshed that characterized Dublin, she wondered if her husband would still be alive when she returned. _We can't do this, not now. Not yet._

"Don't you want this baby?" Tom asked her later that night as she sobbed in his arms. She could hear the hurt in his voice, but she had no answer to his plead. How could they bring a child into all of this? She thought they had more time before this – time to get settled, time to allow the air to clear of gunshots, time to bring their child into a more secure environment.

She felt hopeless as she had never felt before and when she struggled with the knowledge in the days that followed, wanting nothing more than to find comfort in her one ally in this hostile world, she still saw the pain she had inflicted that night, engraved into every touch and every word spoken, and then, even in only a minuscule part of her consciousness that she would be ashamed of later, she had also feared for them.

The morning sickness had not been long in coming, neither had it exclusively made its presence known in the morning, and more than ever, she feared Matron's retaliation and what her income's loss would mean for their household, which did nothing but aggravate the nausea and the tears as she leaned over the toilet bowl, praying for whatever form of divine intervention and wondering for the hundredth time what was to become of them.

 _Tom, what will we do now?_

Then, she found she was able to breathe and hope again.

Sunday lunch after mass, they always spent at Cathleen Branson's house in a neighborhood north of the Liffey. That particular day, almost three weeks after she had made the discovery that she was with child, Sybil ran past the gang of children playing on the floor of the dining room and allowed herself to be sick on the kitchen sink, unable to make it to the toilet bowl in time.

Her mother-in-law entered on her heels, stopping her son from following and insisting that he let her handle this. She held Sybil's hair back and rubbed her back to calm her down. "Cheer up," she said when it was over. "It means that your baby is strong."

Sybil would have retorted about the lack of scientific veracity of old wives tales but her tears overtook her, and before she knew it, Cathleen had pulled her into her arms and was wiping away her tears, in the same way that Sybil's mother used to. She was kinder now, more sympathetic since they had relayed the news of the baby's coming, and with her mother a body of water away, Sybil could not have been more grateful.

"There, there," she whispered, rubbing Sybil's back in rhythmic patterns. "It'll be alright, you'll see. You've nothing to be afraid of."

"But –,"

"We didn't have anything when Keiran came along, you know? My husband didn't have a job and you know how hard it is for a married woman to get a stable job around here. Then Tommy came along and –,"

"How did you –?"

"The point is, we didn't have anything we could give them then but Tommy's gone much further than I could have imagined and you said you wanted to leave that all behind, well here you are."

"Nan!," a child called from somewhere in the small house and Cathleen moved towards the door.

"You're strong, I've no doubt you can weather the storm," And with that she was gone and Sybil was left alone to digest her mother-in-law's words.

After all, what child wasn't born into a world of adversity of some sort?

Her own privileged childhood, gilded with nannies and governesses and deprived of want, and repeatedly she had been told that her education was of no significance because of her sex, that her opinions were not to be her own, that her existence as a person in her own right was only secondary to that of men that surrounded her. It was a lie if she said that the war she had been fighting all her life had not hurt. And Tom, without a cent to his name, but with enough drive and ambition to compensate, even now in this insecurity, she could not help believing in him and believing that they both have risen above their circumstances.

 _It means our baby is strong_.

She realized that it wasn't so much a scientific truth as it was factual and feeling if only a tiny sense of relief, her hand found its way to her belly and she allowed herself to imagine a future beyond this fear –the warm weight of her child in her arms as she rocked her to sleep, the tears she and Tom would shed as they walked their daughter to that far-off first day in a school, bereft of governesses, with the chance of allowing her to make something of herself, that glorious day of their first-born stepping out of a great college, capped and gowned, diploma in hand, as neither of her parents ever were, no one daring to opine what a waste of money it had been sending a girl to school. She found herself smiling, at last. _You'll have it all, my baby, whatever it takes. We won't hand you anything less than the world._

"You look happy," Tom told her that night as they settled into the bed.

She smiled and took his hand, laying it atop her stomach.

"I do so hope it's a girl."

The next morning, mere days from Christmas and a smile as bright as the sun, she wrote to her mother.

 _My darling Mama,_

 _This is the most glorious morning…_

* * *

There were two things that stood out the most – first was the feeling as if her heart may explode from feeling too much as she held their daughter in her hands and as she watched Tom take her in, his eyes conveying that he felt exactly the same as she. The other was the sensation of wading through the darkness as she heard the baby's cries become more urgent as she called out for her. The rest was nothing more than a blur of pains imagined and real, of moments of clarity that she struggled to place within a bigger picture, and then of a stretch of blankness.

Still, it was her baby that she first asked for the moment she opened her eyes and met those of her husband, bloodshot with dark circles below them. The nurse who had seen death first hand in the war, and then in the slums of Dublin, had pieced together the significance of those blurred events that brought her here (and the fact that what happened could very well mean her or her daughter), and she felt her heart catch in her throat as she took in the ward and its silence, their little girl nowhere in sight.

But her mother brought her in mere moments after she awoke (after three days of unconsciousness Tom explained, his eyes haunted), looking almost as dumbstruck when she had inquired after the baby, looking very much as if she wanted to cry. But Sybil breathed a sigh of relief.

"Can I hold her?" she inquired, her voice croaking from disuse, her chest aching as she watched the squirming bundle that was now in her husband's arms.

She watched as her mother gave Tom a look of inquiry, but he nodded and in an instant, he was lowering the baby into her arms.

"Go, on, Sybbie," he cooed, yet she had the impression that it had been a while since he has last laughed and smiled. "Say hello to your Mama."

"Sybbie?" Sybil heard herself ask, the baby already warm in her arms.

"Sybil, of course. What else would I name her?"

She wanted to say something in reply, but instead she turned her attention to her daughter, taking in her tiny face, not expecting the overwhelming feeling of heartbreak that came over her.

"She's so beautiful."

The child she held resembled very little the one she remembered. Her daughter looked much less a newborn and had already taken the features of the age one could only designate as babyhood. Her cheeks had filled out and they now blushed like russet apples. She was bigger too, much bigger than Sybil remembered, and much more alert. For a moment, she was afraid that her daughter would protest, plead with her father and grandmother to take her away from the stranger in whose arms she was in. But the child seemed happy enough to return her mother's gaze, a miniature of Tom's eyes staring back at her, with raspberries that she persisted on blowing at the tip of her tongue.

Sybil felt the breath catch in her throat, her eyes never leaving her daughter. "How long has it been?"

 _How long has she been motherless?_

"Three weeks," Cora finally said.

"How is she? Did anything happen to her after – ?"

"She's been wonderful, love," Tom answered as he came closer, running a finger down their daughter's cheek. She could also hear the choking in his voice. "She's been perfect."

"She still refuses to sleep at night," Cora added. "And she keeps us on our toes but otherwise, she's marvelous. She just misses her mother that's all."

Sybil felt the damn break and tears were falling uncontrollably from her eyes. She heard the choking sound that escaped her lips and she saw the baby startle, as if getting ready to match her mother's cries, but she only held her closer and more desperately. Before she could see him, she felt Tom settle beside her, taking them both in his arms, holding their whole family together, for the first time in three weeks and she burrowed against him, needing to feel his presence, his assurance that they are all alright and they will all be alright.

"Do you want me to take her, darling?" she heard her mother ask and she shook her head furiously, afraid to break this hold.

"Not yet, please. Let me have her for a moment longer. I'll be better now."

"Alright," she sighed. "I'll give you a moment alone. I'll let Doctor Clarkson know you're awake." She kissed her daughter's cheek and walked out of sight.

"I'm sorry," Sybil whispered, leaning against her husband and clutching their daughter to her chest. "I'm so sorry."

"Shh, love. It's alright," she could hear the tears in his voice, echoing her own, and she felt her heart contract more painfully. "It's alright now. You're here now. Just promise me you'll never scare me like that ever again."

She nodded against his chest and let him rock them until her tears stopped. In her arms, she saw her daughter yawn.

"Tom?"

"Love?"

"Does she know who I am, Sybbie?" She tested that new name, rolling it off her tongue.

She felt him nod against her hair. "We've brought her here before. You were lucid sometimes. You held her then also."

"But you didn't tell me her name before today."

"No."

"Do you think I'll be lucid tomorrow?"

"I hope to God you will. I can't keep losing you like this, love." His heartbreak echoed her own, much as she did not remember, she couldn't keep leaving them like this. She took one of his hands in her own, as she kept another on the baby.

"I'm not going anywhere," she stated, finding her voice again, after the tears. She pressed a kiss against her daughter's cheek and ran her hand over her curling hair, honey-colored like Tom's, her heart breaking that she had already missed so much of her daughter's life, but no more.

"Mama's so sorry, my Sybbie," she told the baby who was falling asleep in her arms. "But Mama's back now and I'll never leave you or your Da ever again."

* * *

She heard it first, felt the sharp collision of her hand against that woman's worn cheek before she had realized what she had done.

Yet she could not bring herself to regret it.

 _Don't let that chauffeur's daughter disturb you anymore. Go back to sleep, you wicked, little crossbreed._

All she saw was red and all she heard was the poison of those words, mingling with her baby's cries. She took one look at that woman, took her nephew from her blubbering figure. Deaf to her excuses, she passed him to her mother and with strength to equal her venom, slapped her across her stunned face. Then she ran to her daughter, took her in her arms and did not stop until she was in her own bedroom's corridor, taking deep breaths and pressing kisses to the curly head she clutched to her heart.

She examined the small hands methodically, the small feet too, her rational side telling her that Nanny West wouldn't dare, but the mother in her refusing to leave anything to chance and she sighed in relief when it was over, the small, dimpled limbs unharmed.

"Mama," Sybbie whispered into the silence, lifting her head from her mother's chest. "Want Martin."

"Tomorrow, darling," Sybil answered, struggling to maintain the calm in her voice, lest she scare her daughter. "You'll get Martin back in the morning. You'll sleep with Mama and Da tonight."

"Sleep Mama and Da tonight?" she parroted.

"Yes, darling, in Mama and Da's big bed. You'd like that won't you?"

"No Nanny?"

"No. No Nanny. Just Mama, Da and Sybbie." She pressed another kiss to her daughter's hair, suppressing the tears that rose to her throat, drawing strength from the small body she held whose own tears had long been stemmed, excited at the privilege granted her tonight.

 _How dare she?! How dare she look at my child, at any child in the eye and dare to call them –?!_ She tried to stop her shaking but her daughter didn't seem to notice, babbling one question after another.

"Da story?"

"You'll have to ask him," she forced a smile. "But I don't believe he'll mind."

"Play also before sleep?"

"No, darling. Just one story. Mama will play with you tomorrow."

"No work?"

She shook her head. Doctor Clarkson would protest but Isobel would understand. She needed to be with her daughter. She could not leave her after what she had just witnessed. "Not tomorrow, darling. Maybe we can even join Da at work."

The child gave a little cheer of joy before squealing at the top of her lungs as they entered the room, "Da, I sleep here! No Nanny!"

"Is that so?" Tom smiled, meeting them at the door and taking Sybbie from her arms. He looked at his wife and registered the tension in her posture and the trouble in her eyes. "Any reason?" he asked as she made her way to the bed and pulled down the covers.

"I believe I've just dismissed the children's nanny."

"What? Why?"

"Because her misplaced values have no place here – Mama's words, not mine," she answered, still struggling to steady her voice. "I would have said something worse if I was left to my own devices. Later," she added, anticipating his question. "Not while the baby's awake."

"Not baby," Sybbie complained, shaking her head vigorously and burrowing against her father.

"Of course you're not," Tom laughed, pressing a kiss to her hair, as they settled on his side of the bed. "Can I do anything?" he added, turning to his wife and she knew he could read how shaken she still was.

"Just be here."

He drew her to him and she pillowed her head on his chest, running her hand through their daughter's honey curls. They settled into companionable silence watching their daughter cheerfully sing to incorrect lyrics a song Rose had taught her that was rather too risqué for Sybbie's grandfather's tastes.

"Tom," she ventured after a while.

"Hmm?"

"What they say about us, none of it is important because none of them would ever understand. All that matters is the three of us and what we make of ourselves and that's what we'll teach her."

Tears escaped her as that woman's words returned to the front of her mind. Her daughter understood none of it, she knew that, showered as she was with affection by all else. In all likelihood, it was the tone with which those words were spoken that had frightened her. But she would understand them one day and this first incident, inflicted on an innocent child would not be the last. The mother in her trembled at the knowledge that it was in no way an easy life that awaited her daughter. But Tom only held her closer and pressed a kiss against her temple.

"Of course we will," he smiled. "We promised we'll give her the world hadn't we? We'll give her what we couldn't have. Besides, she's strong. I know she can brave whatever storm."

"You sound like your mother."

"Da, story," Sybbie interrupted. She had finished her song with them none the wiser, but her eyes were still wide open. Sybil knew, at this point, it was because she was fighting sleep.

"Only if Mama says it's alright."

"Only one, and then you'll go to sleep, understood?"

She nodded happily, all thoughts of Nanny West already forgotten, settling into the space between them. Sybil remembered those early days of Sybbie's existence, conceived in chaos and brought into the world in panic and fear. _It means your baby is strong_.

"Love?" Tom addressed her before opening the book. In his hand he held her reddened own, the humor in his voice informing her that he had already pieced together a part of what happened.

"Yes?"

"I'm afraid of what she'll be capable of when she grows up."


End file.
